Having held a fellow human beingBackbone to bone on the long boneOf his arm; having then carriedHim for a year like a football,Never fumbling once, really never -And all this before any genuineVoice was born and could go to war,Striking with yogurt as he declaimsHis shrill imperium of human rights -Leaves a man ill-suited to any freshAssault from doctrines of equality.They reach him as flat paper echoesFrom some republic of styrofoam; aGrand opera through a teeny speaker.They cannot compete with his afternoons.They cannot compel a two-year-oldWho would rather not put on his pants.Dust of a century too late for bed,They crumble in that firm embraceOf dorsal restraint preferredBy big aides on the ward. "Because,"He hears himself say, "because GodBound the strong to rule the weak,As their burden and their glory -"Did he just say this? Even toHimself? It is his own throat,Not a dream or a computer - "becauseGod bound the strong to rule the weak,You shall put on your pants." AndBy hand the thing is done. Yet sinceNo good sword lacks its back-bite edge,"Those who wish to command must firstLearn to obey -" easy lesson in someAges; most difficult in our own.The noble is a hunted man, a JewIn Berlin. He survives in a mask,Half a murderer and half a joke.Even his nuts are small and soft, andIn school his daughters learn onlyTo despise him. Who then is leftTo rule us? Where now the lions?Still bred, perhaps - where trained?Lord knows we tried ruling ourselves;You can see how that one worked out.

But as a proper reactionary, you should write poetry that rhymes. Write sing-song poetry that people will want to memorize and recite over and over again. That's the way to really annoy the modernists.

I have always been disgusted by bullying. I can't see any more stark example of it than a 150-pound adult striking a 30-pound child to get what they want. It's not children that make me doubt libertarianism, but adults and what the consider responsibilities.

What does a 2-year-old need pants for? That's about domination, not the good of the child. What terrible consequence are they going to suffer without pants? If we were talking, say, pneumonia or the plague, maybe you'd have a case.

My parents never hit me. Nor much of anything, really. What do you predict I acted like as a child? what rules do you predict I don't follow as an adult?

Well, for starters I gather that you send your toddlers out without pants on. Old Man Herbert will be most pleased, I'm sure.

Parenting philosophy at 12 or 14? They learned when they were 2 that they dare not defy me in my house. They know reflexively that violence begets violence. And they are kind-hearted people of peace bereft of belligerence.

It is well known that boys particularly are likely to turn out badly if they lack a figure of authority when growing up. The purpose served by the authority figure is to hardwire into the child a healthy respect for rules and consequences of misbehavior.

Smacking is how that authority is most effectively enforced.

Another difference between bullies and parents is that bullies bully all the time. Parents use coercion rarely and more than make up for it with positive feedback and pampering.

I think the broader point here is that modern liberal thought, admitting only the possibility of being either a victim or oppressor, cannot conceive of any benevolent reasons for parents spanking their children.

So the children (victims) have to be protected from their parents (oppressors) by legal means, just as incarcerated criminals, blacks, the poor, women, Muslims etc must be protected from society.

Can you boys read? I think he's talking mainly about the severe training of the knight, for the exercise of rule over cultures and societies made up of more average people -- not the proper socialization of toddlers at large. I guess it's not super-clear, but the kid is a metaphor of the weak-to-average population.

I used to have lots of hard times at Eleusis. Gonna head for whitewater, climbing if I can hack it. But I'm still on the barbell askesis prepping the real askesis. Been strolling around the t-storms some, though lightning strike features some risk of permanent neuro damage/ depression etc. I'm pretty averse to risks to the brain.

So died Cyrus; a man the kingliest and most worthy to rule of all the Persians who have lived since the elder Cyrus: according to the concurrent testimony of all who are reputed to have known him intimately. To begin from the beginning, when still a boy, and whilst being brought up with his brother and the other lads, his unrivalled excellence was recognised. For the sons of the noblest Persians, it must be known, are brought up, one and all, at the king's portals. Here lessons of sobreity and self-control may largely be laid to heart, while there is nothing base or ugly for eye or ear to feed upon. There is the daily spectacle ever before the boys of some receiving honour from the king, and again of others receiving dishonour; and the tale of all this is in their ears, so that from earliest boyhood they learn how to rule and to be ruled.

In this courtly training Cyrus earned a double reputation; first he was held to be a paragon of modesty among his fellows, rendering an obedience to his elders which exceeded that of many of his own inferiors; and next he bore away the palm for skill in horsemanship and for love of the animal itself. Nor less in matters of war, in the use of the bow and the javelin, was he held by men in general to be at once the aptest of learners and the most eager practiser. As soon as his age permitted, the same pre-eminence showed itself in his fondness for the chase, not without a certain appetite for perilous adventure in facing the wild beasts themselves. Once a bear made a furious rush at him, and without wincing he grappled with her, and was pulled from his horse, receiving wounds the scars of which were visible through life; but in the end he slew the creature, nor did he forget him who first came to his aid, but made him enviable in the eyes of many.

After he had been sent down by his father to be satrap of Lydia and Great Phrygia and Cappadocia, and had been appointed general of the forces, whose business it is to muster in the plain of the Castolus, nothing was more noticeable in his conduct than the importance which he attached to the faithful fulfilment of every treaty or compact or undertaking entered into with others. He would tell no lies to any one. [Impressionable Ashkenazi youths and zennists, please grab your pencil or highlighter.] Thus doubtless it was that he won the confidence alike of individuals and of the communities entrusted to his care; or in case of hostility, a treaty made with Cyrus was a guarantee sufficient to the combatant that he would suffer nothing contrary to its terms. Therefore, in the war with Tissaphernes, all the states of their own accord chose Cyrus in lieu of Tissaphernes, except only the men of Miletus, and these were only alienated through fear of him, because he refused to abandon their exiled citizens; and his deeds and words bore emphatic witness to his principle: even if they were weakened in number or in fortune, he would never abandon those who had once become his friends.

If you boys like a little agon, maybe post up some hard acts you done on or after oct 1 2012. I heard the daemon VIRTV likes contests. Of course not all feats are very objective, comparable, narrable, or pseudonymizable.

RS: I got the parallel, but if you have sprog then that part can easily resonate above and beyond. As a consolation prize, most of the comments about pants-wearing can be taken as metaphors themselves.

Hazim, 'send' them out without pants? Yes, adults make me doubt libertarianism.

Who knows when to hit back?

Indeed, parenting is not the same as bullying. Which is why you shouldn't hit your kids.

'Letting' them go outside without pants would be an interesting problem. There's letting them learn first hand why pants are good idea - but north american cultures are so prudish that they're likely to get an overreaction. Perhaps I'd decide the natural consequence is that they can not wear pants - but they also can't leave.

Because you may have turned out ok (rather whiny, but still) doesn't mean everyone else will or that with a firmer hand you couldn't have been more disciplined or organized.

Society suffers even if a minority is wayward. Today about 5% of black males are in prison at any given time. Huge numbers are barely literate without any useful skills. This is primarily a parenting failure due to absence of suitable authority figures. And your suggestions, sadly being put into practise at law-point across the West, are further undermining whatever authority is left.

I have a child and a toddler, both of whom are doing very well. Have you any first hand experience with kids? I gather from your comments that you've never actually had to deal with any.

No we haven't. There's no freedom of association for like-minded people to come together and establish polities and rule themselves. We're not allowed, for example, to form Jew-free states and rule ourselves.

I propose another MMBF drive, hopefully leading to a more regular posting schedule (and maybe saving little Henry from a spanking or two). Also, I missed the first one and have most certainly learned a lot from UR.

Alrenous,

Congrats on not being a murderer and all, but have you ever been tested? Have you experienced hunger? What would it take for you to rationalize robbery? And is it conceivable to you that a human being can have more than negative responsibilities?

I remember a while back I thought we were having an interesting conversation, when you responded with what I'm sure you thought was a witty update on Hume's reasonable preference for the destruction of the whole world instead of the scratching of his finger, at which point I realized there was no point in continuing the conversation, there was no communication going on. So perhaps you can see how your "well, I turned out fine" leaves something to be desired in my opinion, even leaving aside the naked solipsism and lack of imagination.

Seth, good citation, but I think you've misunderstood who Lacan thought would err. He's a little more subtle than a teenager.

I had a funny pants-less child moment recently. I was in the park with my daughter (almost 2). It was crowded, and as we're leaving a large brood was arriving. And all the sudden one of the kids, at minimum 5 years old, pulls his pants down to his ankles (everything) and starts peeing on a grassy island in the middle of the walk way. And his dad comes hustling over to suggest he cease and desist, while loudly saying "What? He's not hurting anybody!!!" to anyone who was judging his son.

I think the guy handled that situation pretty well, but I couldn't help wondering what life in that house is like.

All asketic jobs can be recommended for developing the feeling of power and responsibility. Like, if you can even handle it.

Any job where you are directly responsible for an outcome of high affective salience. For example, car mechanics and carpentry, electrical work. Doing something wrong can lead to serious adverse results, to yourself or others, which are your fault. Accordingly you are forced towards discipline and strength. Doctoring, engineering. Maybe some kinds of law, and judging. There's a bunch more. Operating heavy or dangerous machinery. Soldiery. Security. The point is that whatever has happened or not happened cannot be much attributed to others ; it's you. That moral peril is one thing that can make your life more real.

The illustrative opposite would be like this, I once headed a crew to plant a couple ornamental trees. I don't think I coordinated it that well, and maybe the trees died. Considerable waste of dough if so, but so what? On the other hand I had to drive a huge stake-bodied down a twisty country road to do that same day's work, which was as scary and mind-developing as planting trees is not. It required a lot of engagement and presented some odds of ending /real/ badly. Loading a trailer can also be somewhat of a serious business. Felling trees is another good one. I can tell you, bring one down in a slightly fd up way, because you cut corners or lied to yourself just a little about what you think is really going to happen... it comes down like 60* or less from where some dude is standing -- then check out how you feel about yourself and life.

There are also straight-up danger jobs like being a cabbie, doing chainsaw work way up a tree on climbing spikes, or again soldiery.

Yes, I have first hand experience with kids. I expected to have issues with boundaries, what with how everyone carries on. It was therefore shockingly easy. This specifically from a kid who has serious 'behaviour problems' both with his parents and at school. The problem is with the parents and the teachers, not the kid.

Do you pointlessly insult your kids too, or just me?

G. M. Palmer, no they don't. Your turn.

Gabe Ruth, More than negative responsibilities? Not imposed on them, no. But, to quote MM's very first post,"Surely, agreeing to something and then, at your own convenience, un-agreeing to it, is the act of a cad."

I test myself on occasion, out of pure scientific curiosity. I'm satisfied with the results, and I'd relay them but they'd be long and you have no way of knowing I'm not lying.

As to robbery, I'd rob a robber without compunction, and I generalize this principle. Otherwise there is no excuse.

"So perhaps you can see how your "well, I turned out fine" leaves something to be desired in my opinion, even leaving aside the naked solipsism and lack of imagination."

And doubtless you care about my opinion of you exactly to the extent you believe I care about your opinion of me.

This argument goes, "I don't like you, therefore I think you're immoral." Interesting. Do you believe I'm allowed to perform the symmetric syllogism?

I'd offer heavy odds that Moldbug's been writing more than poetry; he can't help himself. He may not have time for his blog, but he's picking fights on someone else's, somewhere out there. The pseudonym's gotten too hot, so he's shed it. We already know he never liked his loyal orcs following him around, annoying his opponents, and making him look bad.

> Even assuming your received wisdom were true, you really can't work out how to control a 2-year-old without hitting them? Really?

Alrenous you hit them on the tail, not the face or something. The 'brain' is reputed important.

Cochran once told about his hippie fellow grad student whose kid pulled the boiling water off the stove. As in, onto itself. Cochran's kid made motions toward playing with the stove and he 'instilled the fear of god' or something, with his hand.

I can't imagine your perspective. There's nothing more transient than getting stung on the ass. Yet it's naturally effective for dumb and/or undeveloped minds. How many times have you howled and winced from accidental injury -- practically ground your teeth -- about twelve seconds later you feel pretty great.

> RS: I got the parallel, but if you have sprog then that part can easily resonate above and beyond. As a consolation prize, most of the comments about pants-wearing can be taken as metaphors themselves.

"So what, am I some moral prodigy that can learn without being struck, or are your ideas about kids just wrong? "

Does not compute.

In any sufficiently large sample set outliers are likely to be found. For society as an evolutionary being though, the propagation of which is the purpose of its members (I know this sounds freakish to you, but that's why your type is going extinct, leaving a huge mess as the only legacy) any advantage or disadvantage even if small is compounded over generations. A society which you advocate would and does have a large dysfunctional parasitic component which will drag it down in competition with other rival societies.

In other words, this is why the US is having its ass kicked all over the world and at home. Not only is it disadvantaged by having a huge dependent population (a consequence of your policies) it is also held back from properly dealing with existential competitor societies by your mates in Amnesty and HRW.

I hope you reflect on some of this rather than reflexively reject it because it does not fit your worldview.

> I remember a while back I thought we were having an interesting conversation, when you responded with what I'm sure you thought was a witty update on Hume's reasonable preference for the destruction of the whole world instead of the scratching of his finger, at which point I realized there was no point in continuing the conversation, there was no communication going on. So perhaps you can see how your "well, I turned out fine" leaves something to be desired in my opinion, even leaving aside the naked solipsism and lack of imagination.

I was born hypo-empathic. The demonstrated cure is the classical psychedelics. MDMA is much too toxic, or seems like it could be. Have a gander at some of the stuff it shows on microscopy.

The 'classic' classical psychedelics seem to have a mostly clean empirical safety record to the best of my knowledge, though I haven't studied it (see HPPD, etc). They are of course socially toxic ; at least lacking a hierarchic ritual and/or society they are.

Granted, there exist toxic tryptamines -- AET, bufotenine -- which are quite considerably similar in structure to 'classic' classicals like DMT. But basically, so what. If you know some bio, some med chem, this won't strike you as being too unique an affair. Toxic chemical species happen, mon.

> We already know he never liked his loyal orcs following him around, annoying his opponents, and making him look bad.

We have never proven loyal in that sense, and he was possibly a little more interesting back when he used to 'fight back' down on the ground. Fighting is good for you.

Much of the interest of this joint has been from people's readiness to resist and reverse him. I never suggested to any person that they read his works without all the comments. (And that was so before I myself commented.) I read all the works and was very often convinced by his critics. They are a good match.

Anyway I know he has other stuff to do, I'm just glad I get to tangle with his mind regardless. I could probably do well to read the whole thing with comments again. Hell I read Thrasymachus three or four times, he's a little more compact though.

I wonder if you'll come crawling back when your kids are in their teen years, and they don't listen to you, or if you'll chalk that up to some "natural phase of life" BS.

And then one day, they'll come home with a face tattoo, and somewhere, deep down, some part of you will experience a twinge of doubt. "

Like most other religions, the liberal religion has taken prescriptions that may have been beneficial back in the day and then made immovable dogmas out of them, just like, say Islam.

Thus more freedom is always good and the underdog is always morally and politically correct. This dogma has exhausted its straightforward applications such as slavery, and must now seek new markets to remain active. So now we have animal rights, criminal rights, terrorist rights and children's rights, irrespective of whether any of these actually make sense or provide any long term advantage to the practicing society.

Unfortunately the liberal religion has subverted state institutions into enforcing its doctrine and indoctrinating, through the school system and mass media every upcoming generation.

The resolution will happen when these practices so enfeeble its host society that it collapses or is left with no choice but to wake up and excise this outgrowth.

In the interest of clarity in the parenting debate with Alrenous, my parenting philosophy is as follows:

I typically explain myself to my older one (3.25 years old) when I require certain behavior. For instance, the danger posed in crossing the busy street downstairs alone (risk of severe injury/death) or the importance of sharing with the younger sibling (an important inter-familial/social skill) or brushing teeth before going to bed (personal hygiene and discipline).

I explain myself a couple of times before using a smack on the bottom. So far that has proved very effective in cases where compliance was not forthcoming, which is now quite rare.

S Alrenous, do you suggest that I allow my child to run amok on the busy street or bully her younger sibling or grow up to be a lazy indisciplined teenager with rotten teeth?

Everyone's dumm about something, it's almost like why fight it. Read Alrenous on intuition, the history of the Enlightenment, the 'bicameral mind' so to speak, and the mass psychological impact of the mind-brain problem -- pretty much you'll never see the world the same way again.

> That's because the Jews are the natural aristocracy. Why don't you just submit to our rule and quit kicking against the pricks?

You're currently the aristocracy of a flooded public bathroom, so what do you propose to do. You can't really rule it by yourself, or through the high-low alliances that repeatedly tempt you, to your redounding discredit. You are just going have to rule it with us, so telephone a fellow Jew and pass it on. However fucked up joint rule tends to be, the alternative at this point is:

Then they shouldn't care about freedom of association for people who wish to exclude Jews from their environments.

Freedom of association terrifies parasites because they will be exposed to empirical discovery. That’s why they try to impose their social dogmas against "anti-Semitism" everywhere — so as to prevent any control groups from forming anywhere. The fact that this violates consent is easily dealt with: Those who are not “persuaded” by propaganda are merely accused of "anti-Semitism" and "hate". Problem solved.

Like all theocracies they are viciously anti-science hence anti-truth. The power of argumentation is not to be infringed by experimentation.

"As in, onto itself. Cochran's kid made motions toward playing with the stove and he 'instilled the fear of god' or something, with his hand."

My reply is the bit about the plague.

"There's nothing more transient than getting stung on the ass."

And nothing more permanent than the mindset it endgenders - if you're bigger, you get what you want by force.

You know, Cochrane didn't have to hit the kid. I've been in almost that exact situation. I simply picked them up and moved them away. After a few goes, they gave up. (Though also, see below re: roads.)

I've also tested this on cats. Doesn't work on cats.

"Yet it's naturally effective for dumb and/or undeveloped minds."

Such as cats. On humans, it sacrifices the long term for the short term.

"How many times have you howled and winced from accidental injury -- practically ground your teeth -- about twelve seconds later you feel pretty great."

As a child? Not once. As an adult, I still wouldn't use the word 'great.' Typically that kind of pain means I'm bleeding on something.

Probably shouldn't try this argument after admitting to being hypo-empathetic. One of the people you'll fail to appreciate is yourself.

The verification is watching people who don't report pain still acting like they're in pain. For example, I've annoyed people, noticed, tried to apologize, they say its fine, and they then turn passive-aggressive for a while. If I annoy them differently, they go passive-aggressive in the same way.

If I hit you every time you failed to appreciate logic, do you believe you'd become better at logic?

And it would be for your own good, not because I have a obsession with logic?

"Not only is it disadvantaged by having a huge dependent population (a consequence of your policies"

Not my policies.

What did I say that lead you to believe I endorse progressive policies? I'll say it better if I can figure out how.

G.M. Palmer,

You've stated your position well enough to give me something to work with; much appreciated.

One of those is that sometimes people, including the small ones, have to be dressed.

Perhaps you're just an anarchist. That's fine, but what are you doing here?"

I'm better described by anarcho-monarchist or uniarchist. (Panarchist is taken.)

Reason 1: children having to be dressed is not a good more. It prevents zero bad outcomes. It is about authority and authority alone.

Reason 2: isn't there something about not staying within one's echo chamber? I can't exactly use proggies; they're too incompetent at scholarship.

Reason 3: Moldbug has great ideas, applicable to freedom-philosophies. 3.5: Moldbug is really really close to having a perfectly consistent philosophy, and despite the small chance of success, I believe it is worthwhile to try to nudge him the rest of the way.

"In the interest of clarity in the parenting debate with Alrenous, my parenting philosophy is as follows:"

Appreciated. You should give yourself a pseudonym, though, because otherwise I can't tell if you're same or different from that idiot calling themselves anonymous.

"Alrenous, do you suggest that I allow my child to run amok on the busy street or bully her younger sibling or grow up to be a lazy indisciplined teenager with rotten teeth?"

Re: street, see bit about plague. Your parenting style has known effects. Mine is less proven. I don't suggest anyone risk their kids lives on it until it's more proven.

Does anyone know why I even have to say the bit about plague? Shouldn't it be a given? Or know why I have to repeat it?

Re: bullying, you have a responsibility to protect the younger sibling. I believe it is counterproductive to hit the elder to convince them that hitting is bad.

It is also unnecessary. The power that lets you safely hit them also lets you physically prevent them.

Especially as they already know hitting is bad, and just want to know if they can get away with it.

If I am wrong, then next most likely reality is that your style is correct. By refusing to listen to reason, they may have demonstrated that they are equivalent to soulless robots that cannot control themselves.

However, when I looked at the details, I found kids test boundaries on purpose - because they don't believe in the boundary, they want you to prove it, not because they want to be on the other side.

There's a great LastPsychiatrist quote about this, which I sadly cannot remember the location of. It goes like this: kid wants to wear their underwear on their head. (Why did they even ask? Why not just do it?) You can say yes, or no. Which is best? Doesn't matter, as long you also say that society frowns on it.

Generous Moldbug, prefigured in dreams, how long will you linger under the white wing of peace?Because our people, deludedand harmed, will never see the American spirit freedfrom the bonds of ancient sleepuntil the unhappy land returnto the example set by European kings,take care, O nation,to honor those bloggers, since youare almost widowed of such men today.Turn and gaze, O homeland,at that scene of ardent philosophs,and weep, and be scornful of yourself,since grief without scorn is foolish now.Turn, and rouse yourself,and spur yourself onby thinking of our ancestors, our children.

> What does a 2-year-old need pants for? That's about domination, not the good of the child. What terrible consequence are they going to suffer without pants? If we were talking, say, pneumonia or the plague, maybe you'd have a case.

Are we talking inside the house or out? Outside there do exist perverts.

Inside, it's OK to enforce some arbitrary rules. We're social animals, heed convention to some extent. It's important to get used to this and make concessions to it, however little.

You and I have agreed that ordinary schooling is largely a measure for taming and reducing (and brainwashing) humans, and is largely regrettable. But since that amounts to $100,000s worth of effort extracted from the poor student -- a LARGE concession -- I don't know why you would go on about relative trivialities like pants.

Broken up into tracking groups, most of them could learn what's appropriate for them in a couple hours a day, then do some actual immediately-productive labor with an actual natural reward. Like you could take them on an (extra) trip someplace in exchange for their work. However I would largely just let them run wild.

Of course, one cause of our views is, neurotypical children are often enough pleased by pleasing adults, where haughty high-P (sensu Eysenck) creatures like you and I are not displeased or pleased by the reaction of (98% of) others to our little inchoate essays in school, much as we still are not pleased or displeased to this day in re our highly excellent essays. It's hard for us to imagine...

> Especially as they already know hitting is bad, and just want to know if they can get away with it.

Wrong wrong, Monsieur Rousseau. Nature red in tooth and claw. Antagonizing siblings over and over is a compulsive quest for dominance, /not/ felt as evil, and the point is to extract just a marginal bit more food and insulation at their expense when the lean times or the famine comes around. Or just during baseline hunger.

Which has been 'rendered quaint' in recent years, but of course evolution's not /that/ rapid.

So you're wrong.

>> There's nothing more transient than getting stung on the ass.

> And nothing more permanent than the mindset it endgenders - if you're bigger, you get what you want by force.

Well I don't favor flogging the heck out them all the time as if this were Sparta and hostile armies could crest the horizon any morn. Plenty of people do do that today, and it's out of some sort of pathology, we agree on that.

Learning that bigger things have more force than you is a fair lesson. It has applications to 18-wheelers, bears, kids you meet who are bigger than you, etc.

As Jim teaches us, George Monck was 'bigger' than priests who wanted to rule England by holiness contests, he got what he wanted by force, and this was good.

I'll grant, purely for the sake of argument, that your simply deflecting the child from the stove five times might be effective in like n% of cases for some n closely approaching unity. (Please note I don't necessarily believe this is actually true ; I don't want to be responsible for spreading injurious ideas.) I bet Cochran's way is effective in (n + x)% for some nontrivial x. Since the stakes are high, getting the extra x is well worth it.

Anyway, you are basically just insane about the whole issue, I have more fun when we talk about other stuff.

Hey, other anonymous, you see why you might not want to be associated with that crowd?

So often, my opponents on this issue are able to come up with insults and little else. Let me sink to their level; you're a poopyhead and I pity your kids. Now what? Do I win? Or do I lose because I didn't say it first?

I won't try to hit you if you stop arguing about this. Scout's honour.

I fail to see how calling me insane is productive.

"Outside there do exist perverts."

Is that really your best argument? Outside there also exist psychopaths and drunk drivers. Better not let them outside at all.

"But since that amounts to $100,000s worth of effort extracted from the poor student -- a LARGE concession -- I don't know why you would go on about relative trivialities like pants."

It's a lower bound thing. If you won't even agree to think about not hitting them over pants...

"Wrong wrong, Monsieur Rousseau. Nature red in tooth and claw."

If we're going to talk about nature, hunter-gatherers hit their wives, but not their kids. Nature's less red than you are.

Hey, who here thinks smacking their wives about is okay once in a while?

"Antagonizing siblings over and over is a compulsive"

Compulsive? So they do it right in front of you, then, a: unable to stop and b: unaware you might disapprove?

I've been watching kids basically my entire life and I haven't observed this.

"/not/ felt as evil,"

So the kids you've seen don't make excuses when their adults see them doing it. Moreover, their excuses don't make perfect sense as excuses?

"He started it." "He took my toy and wouldn't give it back."

Kids may need to learn morality. But if so, they no more need to be taught than they need to be taught to walk or speak.

What they need to be taught is to tolerate evil, so they can be proper adults.

Thirdly, they recognize it as evil when it is done to them, upon which it is a simple matter to use symmetry to jump-start their theory of mind; show it must be evil when they do it too.

"Learning that bigger things have more force than you is a fair lesson."

Learning people who supposedly love you will attack you if it serves their interests is not an acceptable cost to learning something they'd easily pick up from people who don't supposedly love them.

"As Jim teaches us, George Monck was 'bigger' than priests who wanted to rule England by holiness contests, he got what he wanted by force, and this was good."

Excellent case study in short-term gain for long-term pain. Now, the priests are bigger and it is bad. Monck implicitly endorsed the current situation.

"I bet Cochran's way is effective in (n + x)% for some nontrivial x."

Begging the question. I bet it isn't.

"Since the stakes are high, getting the extra x is well worth it."

I once again reference my comment about the plague. Pants are not high stakes. Spankers usually do not appeal to boiling pots and vaccines, nor are they ever content with using it to prevent serious injury and nothing else. This is exactly how I know the arguments are insincere or self-deceiving. The conclusions do not follow from the premises.

No, spanking is about status. It is about the parent's status insecurity; they feel socially threatened by someone one-fifth their size. They then use this asymmetry to coerce outward compliance with the status flags.

Though sometimes it is about negative security. They know they're low status, and they resolve to not let it be lower than their kids.

Very rarely, spanked kids will get spanked to protect them from dangers. Yet, there's no wave of environment-massacred kids from non-spanking families.

Verification: on ambiguous cases of disobedience, what predicts a spanking? There's only one real one: parents will let it go if it doesn't make them look bad.

>I'm better described by anarcho-monarchist or uniarchist. (Panarchist is taken.)

Interesting. Certainly I favor monarchy assuming those pesky succession issues can be ameliorated. I would love to hear more about your philosophy of anarcho-monarchism.

>Reason 1: children having to be dressed is not a good more.

This depends largely on your definition of good, which follows:

>It prevents zero bad outcomes.

So a good is something that prevents bad outcomes? I don't know if I trust that definition at all.

Moreover, it certainly does prevent bad outcomes--even if that is the disapproval of others. Not because we should necessarily be guided by others' disapproval (though I would argue that social norms are important and something to be reconstructed) but because the disapproval others feel may indeed be, to quote scripture, "a stumbling block" for them and we should seek to injure no one.

It is about authority and authority alone.

Even if it is, others have pointed out the importance of learning parental authority.

>Reason 2: isn't there something about not staying within one's echo chamber? I can't exactly use proggies; they're too incompetent at scholarship.

Excellent point.

>Reason 3: Moldbug has great ideas, applicable to freedom-philosophies. 3.5: Moldbug is really really close to having a perfectly consistent philosophy, and despite the small chance of success, I believe it is worthwhile to try to nudge him the rest of the way.

Real hazards to children exist. I fell out of a fullsize shopping cart in the grocery when I was about two. Though maybe I was four, because I remember being in the ER lobby. Fractured my dome, may have more or less landed on it. It didn't stop me from becoming a supergenius, but there's no way it could be beneficial to IQ ; it must be neutral/negligible or detrimental. I think it's actually quite conceivable it could be beneficial to creativity. IQ shows every sign of being nothing but a eufunctionality of the brain. 'Eu' meaning eu wrt fitness, of course. Creativity less so ; for instance take a look at some of the stuff on creativity and what they call poor latent inhibition. Which more or less means inferior concentration, or a certain kind of inferiority of concentration. Basically a rather pathetic capacity to suppress 'irrelevant' thoughts and stimuli -- but of course 0.1% of these are actually HIGHLY relevant in unexpected ways! And if you have the IQ to catch the connection: kabam. 'Divination', magic bullseye from 15 miles. Other iso-intelligent people can't do it as often, but will probably outperform you overall in >95% of gainful employment positions.

Whereas the typical creative/ poor inhibition type may just be kind of hapless if he lacks high IQ. He may succeed in the arts since these load far less on IQ than, say, being someone like us does.

The link from creativity to minor degrees of states like bipolarism, anxiety, and melancholy also seems pretty replicable, more especially as regards persons working outside the hard sciences.

Malloy and Cochran have written fascinatingly about creativity. Cochran emphasizes that eminent creativity may not have been very fitness-enhancing for the most part. People like Archimedes or Michaelangelo who were handsomely rewarded for it might be quite rare, and often relatively disinterested in fecundity anyway. In general, the strong would just swipe your ideas and the fitness they contain, offering a pittance, or nothing. In truth they'll probably attempt to kick you one for the reduced sense of power they have experienced (/ressentiment/). Some dude I read suggested that the outbreak of the strange notion of paying people mega dough for ideas (about how to refine artillery), starting circa 1500, was a major reason for Europa's ascendency over the Ottoman. Elizabeth gave Tallis one of the first known patents or copyrights for a piece of music or maybe for any creative product. .

Malloy and Geof. Miller suggest a function for creativity in human courtship behavior.

This is really interesting:http://www.scribd.com/doc/46998473/Are-Genius-and-Madness-Related-Contemporary-Answers-to-an-Ancient-Question

I got into a lot of this stuff through Bruce and W. Lisek so h/t to them.

I think you can easily observe yourself that distractable people with tons of irrelevant thoughts are hapless and behindhand. They nick poorly with time, busy 'dreaming'. What is fitness optimizing is to have mostly highly relevant thoughts, exactly at the time when needed. But again, 1% or 0.1% of the most ridiculously irrelevant thoughts are pseudo-irrelevant and may actually prove mega-relevant. You can also observe the relative sterility of many extremely intelligent people. In many cases I actually know their SATs or GREs. One of the most talented men I knew in early youth, absolutely fascinating from dawn to dusk, I was astonished to learn had a modest SAT. But he had extremely high P sensu Eysenck.

What is really interesting about all this, is how might you increase your creativity, permanently or episodically. IQ is presumably not gonna change much. (Personally I've taken nootropics but had no lasting good results.) For instance Dali, though I generally don't admire his taste at all, would stay awake for three days.

Nietzsche reported prominent symptoms of poor latent inhibition, such as being constantly irritated by carriages on the street, people yacking downstairs (he would usually have a room in a house or boarding house) etc. He whinges about this more than once in his correspondence. This may be one reason he spent most of his time wandering the hills

> So the kids you've seen don't make excuses when their adults see them doing it. Moreover, their excuses don't make perfect sense as excuses?

Thought /you/ were the big expert and fascinating explorer of how we all fabricate five separate layers of rationalizations and lies lies. Making an excuse is just the pursuit of fitness advantage. It has little connection to whether the kid plans to do the same behavior over and over for years. Sure, there may be a twinge of guilt which is partly assuaged by the excuse ; this is certainly not unimportant. But the excuse is also for deflecting parental anger.

Also, the persecuted sibling of course exaggerates the suffering. Because they're hoping to get themselves less persecuted. As is well known, this exaggeration also grates on parents at times.

> Spankers usually do not appeal to boiling pots and vaccines, nor are they ever content with using it to prevent serious injury and nothing else.

OK, pretty true I think, in many cases.

> No, spanking is about status. It is about the parent's status insecurity; they feel socially threatened by someone one-fifth their size. They then use this asymmetry to coerce outward compliance with the status flags.

You may be on to something, in a way, but you are still far from real insight if you do not fully darwinize what you are thinking there.

You don't think there are parent-offspring conflicts over fitness just as there are sibling conflicts over fitness? It's the same thing. We're talking about people made half of self DNA and half of 'enemy' DNA.

Do you deny that kids whinge and whinge in order to increase resource extraction from their parents? This is the biggest cause of spanking, harsh verbal reproach, grounding, etc. You are just lucky to be a classy SOB, as all these frictional behaviors are obviously less prominent in more refined classes and races and subraces. The same shit happens in monkeys, it's in my evo books. The offspring importune and importune. /Many/ kinds of animals eventually drive the offspring off the territory through slowly increasing physical conflict, mostly 'stylized' or light physical conflict. By stylized or light, I mean the way most songbirds fight, with a lot of sound and fury and displays of superior skill and reaction time, but little serious injury. (The amount of serious injury that /does/ occur, though, is very important to making the squabbling aversive and meaningful.)

It is not in the interest of the young bird himself to leave the territory, at least not quite so soon. That is a rather perilous adventure to undertake. In birds that raise two or three separate clutches per year, the adult is especially interested in getting the offspring off the homestead promptly. The same is true for man, since he has other, younger kids who are more helpless and accordingly can get higher marginal utility from his dollar -- thus he himself gets higher marginal (fitness) utility from giving it to them, not to his 18-24yo kid. So the 18-24yo is highly likely to hear a great deal about how many job applications he has or has not completed.

Many months before the monkey is driven off the territory, he still fights to nurse when his mother wants him to be fully weaned. And they have little slapfights. I think this is also attested in humans.

What will really prove my point to you is if you just google something like gestational diabetes. The very fetus is literally attacking the mother from the womb by trying to amp up her blood glucose as high as possible, so the fetus can suck more of that up. The maternal biology is engineered to resist this, not wanting to be sucked dry nutritively. She has other born and yet-unborn offspring to take care of. The reason is simply that the two beings aren't genetically identical ; this directly entails conflict. I think there are many other important examples of maternal-fetal conflict too.

blue jays, crows, small hawks, cruise in and grab these little fuckers allllll the time. Also non-avian predators.

these lads are more compliant, not sure why:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9wqSXnUTSA&feature=relmfu

For one thing, it may be easier for a squirrel or bird to make off with them when they are so small, especially without getting bit on the ass by the parent -- so their interest in being quiet is relatively more salient.

In a diff subspecies, or at a different age, they behave differentlyhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjVsA5oT-Sw&feature=fvwrel

"I would love to hear more about your philosophy of anarcho-monarchism."

It's straightforward. I believe property rights should be respected without exception. To quote MM's first post again, "In fact, it's basically impossible to combine a system in which agreements stay agreed with one in which equality stays equal."

How far does it go? I suspect property rights imply some form of monarchy, so anarcho-capitalism ==> monarchy. The main difference is that kingdom sizes would be based on market efficiency rather than defensive advantage gradients. Property rights + freedom may even imply neocameralism, with the exception of exit rights.

"So a good is something that prevents bad outcomes? I don't know if I trust that definition at all."

A good thing is the opposite of a bad thing.

"Moreover, it certainly does prevent bad outcomes--even if that is the disapproval of others."

Or they'd learn early that the disapproval of others isn't to be feared, something every conventionally-sagacious philosopher has believed. It is, however, annoying, and bare legs are cold: pants on.

Or in other words, I can't tell that a child is from a non-spanking family because their eight-year-olds are into streaking.

"though I would argue that social norms are important and something to be reconstructed"

Social norms are great. Except when poisoned. One great way to poison them is to impose them and fight those who try to exit. Of course the other great way is to let some people ignore the norms without exiting.

The imposition form manifests most obviously to me in contradictions, for example hitting someone because they shouldn't be hitting someone else.

"but because the disapproval others feel may "

I can't argue with anything here except the 'may.' Does it? That's an important question.

"Even if it is, others have pointed out the importance of learning parental authority."

If you have to hit them to have authority, you don't have authority. You have Pavlov.

The sad things is you do have authority. It seems to be genetic. Find me one non-psychopath who's indifferent to the opinion of their parents.

"What is your "rest of the way"?"

I only have suspicions on how to resolve the contradictions. Moldbug knows a huge number of things I'd like to know but don't. While I can tell some things he says conflict with other things, I can't reliably tell what he'd replace it with, or even which one he'd replace.

"Real hazards to children exist. I fell out of a fullsize shopping cart"

Sure. And I notice you've abandoned the pervert.

So who's willing to concede that corporal punishment for pants might be going too far?

"Haven't observed "sibling rivalry""

I haven't observed them doing it compulsively or amorally. They do what they think they can get away with.

"Making an excuse is just the pursuit of fitness advantage."

If they don't understand the principles of morality, those excuses should make no sense.

They should first be surprised the parent is angry at all. You can see this in very young children when they're punished for abstract offences. (Being racist, for example, also misusing objects.) They react with fear or just start crying because they don't understand. They don't get canny or insolent.

Then they should misunderstand the transgression and make the wrong excuses. They should say, "I didn't think you would see it," or something equally relevant but amoral.

They do neither.

By contrast, they make exactly these mistakes with racism. "The nigger didn't hear me!" Well, okay, but that's not the problem here.

"Also, the persecuted sibling of course exaggerates the suffering."

Yet we don't have to hit our kids to make them understand that suffering is morally relevant. How would that even work?

"You don't think there are parent-offspring conflicts over fitness just as there are sibling conflicts over fitness? It's the same thing."

I agree. That doesn't make it right.

I should mention I'm going purely by hypocrisy here. I consider, "Yeah, I only/mainly care about status," to be a fatal counter-argument. Nobody makes this argument.

Hypocrisy is also very natural. But, guaranteed, either the position or the actions are wrong.

"You are just lucky to be a classy SOB, as all these frictional behaviors are obviously less prominent in more refined classes"

As a kid, I intentionally and cynically whinged to do exactly that. My parents responded by spoiling me.

Problem is, I'd hoped they would say no, and I was disappointed when they didn't. I knowingly asked for things I didn't deserve and got them.

So, I knew. Do your kids not know? If not, why did I? Moreover, I saw my peers doing the same. Perhaps with a less awareness of the disappointment; they still acted disappointed, though.

It's also another example of the disconnect between rationale and action. Whinging is annoying, yes, but you, great big responsible healthy adult, can't put up with a little whinging? Really?

Of course, there are times when you're frayed. But then it's not about the whinging.

"And they have little slapfights. I think this is also attested in humans."

Having slapfights with something half your size is dumb. They can't do anything without your implicit permission.

You know, that's really the core of my position. If you can safely hit someone, then you could have utterly prevented whatever action you're hitting them over.

If you thought they wouldn't do it, you're the one who made the mistake. If you thought they would, then why did you let them do it?

To punish them over it - especially highly sensitive children - is trying to divert blame from the responsible to the irresponsible.

"The adult would probably try to stop it except that it's just hopeless."

And so titmice are wiser than humans, who would and have hit the kids despite the uselessness of it.

I should mention I blame politicians. Probably some long-dead warmonger.

Also, the birds could evolve to deliberately look for non-criers and feed them first. Accidental animal husbandry.

"my opponents on this issue are able to come up with insults and little else"

Your debate with G. M. Palmer has shown that you are impervious to logic or common sense. Everything I read in your debate with him confirms my original opinion that you are a fscking idiot. I don't have the admirable patience that GMP does, so I'll stick with the insults.

"Usually our sad sack idiot is stuck attempting to make some point in response to a comment he didn't remotely comprehend. On the subject of trousers however he can equally match any comer.

It's nice to see him finally comfortable in his own pantaloons.

The inferior have indeed inherited the Earth."

See, Alrenous, now *that's* bullying.

A few weeks ago, I was reading "Little House on the Prairie" to my 3 year old. It is implied several times that Laura feared a spanking from her Pa, though I don't think it ever actually occurred in the book. I introduce this not for the facts of Laura's upbringing, but rather the feelings of the adult author. If you haven't read the book (its for little girls), Pa is characterized as something like the Platonic form of fatherhood. She clearly loves and admires him and does not at all fear him.

BTW, so what if spanking is about status? You don't think status is important?

Also, are you against all punishment or just laying hands? We only use "timeouts" (sitting on the stairs silently for three minutes) at my house. My daughter absolutely hates it (I think she mostly feels guilty). I doubt you would consider this abusive. Can you make a distinction, or is it just common sense?

Anyone have any idea if that bit near the end, the three-and-two-halves lines starting with, "He survives in a mask," is a reference to anything in particular? It sounds a little too specific not to be....

I was imagining the situation where you dress the kid, then they strip, so you dress them again, then they strip again...

" I don't have the admirable patience that GMP does, so I'll stick with the insults."

Is this the kind of person a spanking family can expect to raise?

It seems I'm pissing off all the right people.

Or: NO U

Josh,

"You don't think status is important?"

Important for what?

"Also, are you against all punishment or just laying hands?"

Most accurately, I think I'm against the parenting styles of those who got angry with me.

If they'll get so angry about a faceless barely-seen-as-person over the internet, what will they do to someone intentionally pushing their buttons? It's almost certainly a reaction to narcissistic injury.

Normally spanking is an excellent marker for this, because it's overkill.

This prediction has not been entirely borne out.

That you and Palmer and RS can be reasonable about the discussion is new to me. Which has made me realize that my main problem is with lack of empathy and compassion for the kid - regardless of how that manifests.

I'm not personally comfortable with time-outs either, but it's well into the grey zone where I don't necessarily know what I'm talking about. (Along with Palmer's hot stove on the other end.)

Do you ask them to stop first? Do they agree they shouldn't be doing what they're doing?

Do you agree that the status of the parent should be higher than the 3 year old within the household? There is nothing wrong with learning to submit to just authority. One problem with the modern world is that nobody seems to believe anyone should have authority over anyone.

"Do you ask them to stop first? Do they agree they shouldn't be doing what they're doing?"

Obviously, you give a warning (unless its for something like hitting me, my wife, or her 1 year old sister out of anger). I always make her say why she got the timeout when she's finished. She knows she's done wrong.

WRT corporal punishment, I think its important to make a distinction between a highly ritualized formal spanking on the bottom and a responsive spanking from anger or annoyance. These are pretty different things.

I'm impressed at how this discussion turned out. There was one a few months back on TLP about this exact subject that was hilarious (which I should admit I took part in).

Alrenous, you're right about the motivation of narcissistic injury, at least on my part. I've made an effort to restrain my someone-is-wrong(or insulted me)-on-the-internet impulses lately, but the equating of corporal punishment with bullying irritated me, because my parents spanked their children and you had insulted them unjustly. I agree completely that the non-wearing of pants is not spanking offense. It's so stupid it can't be properly understood as malicious, and it will sort itself out pretty quickly. It's also probably a good opportunity to show some magnanimity, an important kingly quality.

Regarding status, there's status in society gained by demonstrating you are able to exert your will on your children, and then there's intra-family status, with the spanker dominating the spankee. While the first is a dumb reason to spank a child, the second of these is obviously indicative of something wrong. If you're spanking to show them who's boss, it's not you (wait till they can hit back; this is why Iranian nukes scare neocons). While I do not theoretically object to corporal punishment, it should only be used if a) there is no doubt on anyone's part that you're the boss and b) there is no doubt of your love (also, never in anger).

Alrenous, if anyone in the above discussion is a narcissist, it is you. Your arrogance and invincible conviction that you are right and good while your opponents are not merely wrong but also evil and insane is classic narcissism (as well as classic Leftism).

I am sympathetic to the non-spanking argument - and I don't spank my children - but you're really turning me off from that position.

"Do you agree that the status of the parent should be higher than the 3 year old within the household? There is nothing wrong with learning to submit to just authority. One problem with the modern world is that nobody seems to believe anyone should have authority over anyone."

The just authority is truth.

The kid should not obey because authority. They should obey if and only if you're correct and they're not. But then there's a natural punishment for disobedience.

But, as before, we're deep into the grey are where I don't necessarily know what I'm talking about.

The modern world is supposed to be built on the idea that nobody except physics can impose authority.

It is in fact built on the idea that even truth doesn't have authority, as revealed by e.g. this. Nor, even, your own promises - you're not to have authority over your future self, which manifests as it being considered legitimate to disobey a boss you've freely agreed to obey.

"I always make her say why she got the timeout when she's finished. She knows she's done wrong."

I would have predicted your parenting style based on the fact you didn't blow up at me for apparently criticizing it.

Especially with the warning, it usually indicates the kid is intentionally testing the rules, and quite willing to risk a time-out. Not doing it at that point would be breaking your word.

Come to think, that's probably part of why spanking and other harsher methods trade long-term for short-term. Punish harshly enough and the kid won't be willing to risk it - they look well-behaved. But they won't get to understand the rules. That and the testing impulse gets backed up, which will then try to come out all at once when it can.

"WRT corporal punishment, I think its important to make a distinction between a highly ritualized formal spanking on the bottom and a responsive spanking from anger or annoyance."

Indeed. I had, until now, never seen someone who would do the former but not the latter. I had, however, seen some doing the latter try to back-justify it as the former. The other thing I see a lot is making unthinking obedience a rule in itself.

I do notice, however, that I'm getting repeated self-aggrandizing disclaimers. "Well, I don't spank, especially not for that." My theory of natural morality predicts that spanking should feel wrong, if indeed it is. Which then means when I point this out, I'm teaming up with neglected conscience - an excellent way to provoke frothing anger.

> Also, the birds could evolve to deliberately look for non-criers and feed them first. Accidental animal husbandry.

You might just have a devastating point.

OTOH the nest is stationary. There are probably four other sibs on average, for North American songbirds. Criers may thus 'invade' the pop (in the technical sense of bringing in a new superior strategy) by essentially holding the fitness of the parents and sibs hostage. One day criers appear by random change. As a parent, you are placing the whole nest at risk (and maybe your own body -- hawks) if you don't placate them. The criers' fitness rocks, and pretty soon you have a race to the bottom. The parents may not be as powerful as they may look, just as a woman is not as powerful as she looks when a fetus programs her for gestational diabetes.

I may even have read approximately such an analysis of importunate offspring someplace.

> It's also another example of the disconnect between rationale and action. Whinging is annoying, yes, but you, great big responsible healthy adult, can't put up with a little whinging? Really?

No, you can't entirely put up with it, because it's not a static situation. Kids (and women) will push more and more against authority. As someone (Jim?) explained, they are programmed to do this because of our malthusian heritage. They push as far as they can against a patriarch because their genes expect to come up against heavy resistance at some point -- in the form of the environment becoming harsh and the patriarch accordingly becoming harsh toward them (as is of course condoned by traditional social systems ; he's not going to get 'in trouble' for being harsh). They also -- just like the squealing baby birds -- want to make sure they dont obtain /subequal/ treatment from the patriarch ; they need to make sure they get their fair share.

Thus they feel this /drang/, continual drive.

But when this /drang/ of whinge eventually reveals the patriarch to be a relative or complete pussy, now they are subject to a /new/ unease: he's weak! They are in danger under a weak patriarch (whether in terms of their fitness being reduced, or their soma actually being damaged or destroyed). This is the dissatisfaction and unease you yourself felt:

> Problem is, I'd hoped they would say no, and I was disappointed when they didn't. I knowingly asked for things I didn't deserve and got them.

Since you are classy-born, with accordingly low frictive feelings and behaviors toward allies, and are also able to cue on the low malthusianicity of your environment, you endured an unease without completely flipping out to a greater or lesser extent.

But many women, for example -- probably women more than kids -- see this unease go to a more dysfunctional extent. For instance they lose sexual attraction. Or kids, teenagers, say 'fuck dad -- weak guy -- I need to get in with some powerful peers of an anti-authoritarian bent who have their own means of power (vandalism, hooliganism ; for girls, liberally dispensing blow jobs, etc etc) -- or means of artificial feelings of power (indisciplined of psychoactive drugs, etc).

> The just authority is truth. &&The kid should not obey because authority. They should obey if and only if you're correct and they're not. But then there's a natural punishment for disobedience.

You are being an idiot. You and I have a special /dharma/ and are unlike others. Our rebellious nature has its role in the grand economy.

For instance, we insist on truth.

But I have explained a million times that most people make a hash of things when they act like this. It's a hash for themselves and a hash for others.

As I keep saying, Gaugin abandoned his wife and child in France, lived as a bum in Paris and Tahiti, and helped himself to other people's women. He was destructive toward others, but the net results were excellent: the whole world got a vision of the divine. That's because Gaugin is special. In other such cases the results are a huge disaster for everyone.

And of course many people imagine that they are Gaugins when they aren't. They believe they can continue to insist on devotion to truth, or beauty, their whole lives, when in fact they do not have the energy and dauntlessness to do so at a high level. Thus, 'the hippie'.

You blithely imagine that people have approximately the same rights //and responsibilities// -- a naturally attractive notion, and typically Anglo affliction, that I was cured of by Nietzsche and perhaps by the congenital promptings of my largely continental race.

Humans are completely dissimilar in nature and value. Of course a good tradesman with a clear, simple mind is generally better than a SWPL, at least under certain historical circumstances. So it's not some simple function of caste.

>> "And they have little slapfights. I think this is also attested in humans."

> Having slapfights with something half your size is dumb. They can't do anything without your implicit permission. &&You know, that's really the core of my position. If you can safely hit someone, then you could have utterly prevented whatever action you're hitting them over.

So you don't think monkeys can see to their own fitness optimization?

How is a monkey, trying to drive the subadult offspring off the territory, going to 'utterly prevent' the subadult from coming back on the territory?

In the case of nursing/weaning conflict, how is a human or monkey going to utterly prevent repeated whinging? Recall what I said above, the vocal whinging may have in part a function of holding others hostage to a risk of predation.

As for the titmice and other songbirds, they may simply not have a very good option for penalizing the whinging offspring with pain. It happens to be pretty damn safe (and easy) to smack a human child on the ass. Birds have beaks and claws, generally rather sharp, and using these to inflict pain may carry a risk of causing infection in the offspring (or just energy-wasting bleeding and inflammation). As you may know, in the pre-antibiotic age people uncommonly but regularly died from /any/ puncture of the skin. Transient febrility may be even more common. Birds are also beyond-gracile in their bone structure. Smacking a baby bird with your wing may not be a very good idea for either you or it. The nest is also crowded, you may per accidens hit a nontargeted offspring -- or hit the targeted one in the head, which is not desirable.

I challenge you to actually become a titmouse and effectively and reliably inflict non-fitness-reducing pain on whingers.

Getting out of theory-land an into parenting-ville; let's talk about the kinds of things for which my daughter might get a timeout.

Today, my daughter (3) was putting on her socks and shoes near the front door. Her 16-month-old sister picked up one of her shoes as 16-month-olds pick up anything they find around them. My eldest was frustrated so she shoved her sister, who fell on her bottom. She was not hurt, but she started crying. The oldest received a minute timeout.

3 year olds are terrible at controlling their emotions. Punishment reinforces what she already knows. There is no "she is right and I am wrong". She's three. She's completely incapable of judging if I am wrong. If you don't understand this you haven't interacted with a lot of three year olds. My daughter is smart for a three year old, but it isn't like she's capable of long chains of reasoning.

Also, what are the natural consequences for my daughter if she pushes her sister? There aren;t any immediate consequences.

A few months ago, my daughter ran out into the street without looking to, I kid you not, chase a butterfly (a very girly, girl). A three year old is not capable of making good judments about things like crossing the street, so we have a no-crossing rule. She always obeyed this until our neighbor's boy, who they never discipline, started running into the streets and receiving only a whiny pleading "Please come back." So my daughter, runs into the street and receives a 3 minute timeout. Minor, but she doesn't like them. She hasn't done it sense.

Again, the rule is necessary because she is incapable of governing herself. The natural consequences of making her own mistakes would be getting his by a car. She realized she was wrong (because not listening to your parents, who have certainly proven themselves trustworthy guides) for a three year old is wrong.

Still no mention of the passing of Eugene Genovese? I recall Mencius having a high regard for his work on the old south.

September 27, 2012 6:36 PM

Since you bring up the Old South, what is the Confederate-apologist excuse for the South's actions in the runup to the war?

It seems clear that the South provoked the North into war by making unreasonable demands to expand slavery outside of the South and that the Hamiltonian North, justifiably, brought the hammer down on the rebellious Jeffersonians and Jacksonians.

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It matters whether the lost cause was sensible if CSA sympathizers, and there are more than a few here, want to be taken seriously.

They were trying to extend their power. Just as the Northerners were trying to extend their power.

The North demonstrated they were more willing to come up with a reasonable settlement than the South.

The Hamiltonians would have allowed the Southern Jeffersonians and Jacksonians to maintain slavery in exchange for the South not pushing slavery too far out West. Even the Hamiltonian to end all Hamiltonians, Lincoln, was prepared to enshrine slavery in the constitution if only the South would agree not to expand slavery.

The South stupidly refused and went to war against a superior military force to expand a mode of labor activity that had already been rendered obsolete by the industrial revolution and, indeed, was arguably obsolete by the 18th century.

Didn't know you felt that way or had those facts about the North's position. Interesting.

Then again how potent do you reckon the constitution to be in 1933. Would you eat about a quarter of it first, or maybe just snort the whole fuckin thing.

Ohanian's Econtalk is really worthwhile. Said Hoover got in a room with all the bigs (Ford Dow etc) to fix wages high -- as he thought this was actually a good economic (or political) idea -- in return for hindering unions. Why, that could be construed as extra- or un-constitutional! remarked Russ Roberts. I wasn't exactly cured of my moldbugg'ry on the spot.

I wonder why they all did this strange policy ; Alrenous recommends first trying malice/(venality, etc) on for size, rather than stupidity. Ie, he says actual outcomes may quite often have been expected. I think both models are pretty important.

Ohanian claims these mega dubious measures were not applied to e.g. agriculture, and wages dropped as appropriate (20-30%) to allow markets to clear rather than languish ten years.

They ceremoniously capped off the convo by agreeing that the country's toast without 'radical improvements in education'. Hats off to the fittest meme in the land.

The CSA kind of wanted to conquer parts of Latin America, too, but the North wasn't exactly going to allow that either. So yeah they were a little a crazy. Then again look how close they came to defeating Lincoln and the war in the election. Crazy actually works sometimes.

1. Planters had kids. The kids wanted land. The land was out west. Why should only Yankees be allowed to expand their civilization?

2. The South new that if she did not expand she would be dominated by the Yankees and their colonies in the Senate.

3. Northerners once they gained dominance were selectively enforcing the Constitution. Personal liberty laws were a clear example of the kind of nullification that was put down by threat of force in South Carolina.

4. The north benefitted from the Missouri compromise, the South hoped at least some benefit from the compromise of 1850, but the north still refused to enforce the fugitive slave laws. Why should they continue to deal with a dishonest broker?

5. John Brown was sponsored by members of the Senate from the party of Lincoln back when Senators were actual political bosses. Additionally, abolitionists tried to start slave insurrections via the mail.

6. The south had legal precedent on her side. Each of the original states to adopt the Constitution had issued articles of secession from the old confederation (which was said to be permanent, a word consciously avoided in the Constitution).

7. It is sometimes forgotten that their were northern filibusters as well and no shortage of northern interests trying to create latin American puppet regimes. Southern filibustering can be viewed as a sign of desperation more than a will to power.

8. The North was the first to develop a purely sectional political party. The Republican party served northern interests exclusively. The South could only have responded by creating a Southern party and issuing in a new era of permanent limited civil war. Of course, the north having been able to create new states via settlement while denying the privilege to the south, the south would be fated to be a permanent loser.

1. Planters had kids. The kids wanted land. The land was out west. Why should only Yankees be allowed to expand their civilization?"

They had no right (moral or legal) to ask for further extensions of slavery after Texas was admitted as a slave state because there were no further Western territories they could expand into without running into conflict with freesoil whites in the remainder of the West.

California's legislature, for one, had voted to enter the Union as a free state in and was not interested in allowing Southerners to move slaves into Southern California, as the South insisted in 1850. Other Western territories such as Utah were also populated by free soil whites who were willing to violently resist any expansion of slavery just as free soil whites in Kansas did. Free soil whites would have been even more hostile to any colonization attempts by the CSA and requested military aid from the Union even if the North had permitted the CSA to secede initially.

And the CSA would have had no choice but to expand slavery over the objections of the free soil whites in California and other Western territories North of the 36°30' because New Mexico and Arizona couldn't be added as slave states due to their soil being unsuitable for plantation crops.

The North saw that if the South wasn't satisfied with Texas, then it would only be a matter of time before slave owners ran into military conflict with free soil whites.

How can recreating Bleeding Kansas in California, Utah, and elsewhere across the West justify the South's self destructive actions?

So are you on;y talking about post-Dred Scott popular sovereignty? Stephen Douglas was part of an aggressive push by "the South" for the expansion of slavery? Or was Taney in cahoots with the mighty slave power. Perhaps, if you would be specific as to who was pushing to expand slavery, when and how. Thanks.

So are you on;y talking about post-Dred Scott popular sovereignty? Stephen Douglas was part of an aggressive push by "the South" for the expansion of slavery? Or was Taney in cahoots with the mighty slave power. Perhaps, if you would be specific as to who was pushing to expand slavery, when and how. Thanks.

Where did I suggest expanding slavery was a Southern conspiracy?

I wrote the South bolted the Union because they wanted to expand slavery against the wishes of the North.

As for "popular sovereignty", since, with the exception of Arizona and New Mexico, all of the remaining territories that could have supported slavery were already populated by free soil whites, there was no more land the North could offer the South without replicating the border violence of Kansas between pro and anti slave whites.

What more concessions was the North supposed to make?

And don't give me any nonsense about how the South was fighting for some abstract constitutional principle to secede - they clearly wanted to secede so they could expand slavery since the only compromises the South viewed as enticing enough to justify remaining in the Union involved expanding slavery, e.g., Crittenden.

2. The South new that if she did not expand she would be dominated by the Yankees and their colonies in the Senate.

Why would that have been bad for the South? As long as they agreed to not push slavery further, the North had no interest in forcing the South to wind down slavery before the South was ready.

3. Northerners once they gained dominance were selectively enforcing the Constitution. Personal liberty laws were a clear example of the kind of nullification that was put down by threat of force in South Carolina.

The personal liberty laws were designed to defuse tensions between the North and South.

Fugitive slaves were a minor problem for plantation owners because the Southern slave population enjoyed natural population growth. Any losses a slave owner endured through personal liberty laws were offset by the growth of the black population, and they certainly weren't severe enough to warrant the South's provacation of the North.

4. The north benefitted from the Missouri compromise, the South hoped at least some benefit from the compromise of 1850, but the north still refused to enforce the fugitive slave laws. Why should they continue to deal with a dishonest broker?

The slave fugitives were a minor economic problem for plantation owners even if they and their surviving apologists are too paranoid to see this molehill as anything but a mountain. See my response above.

5. John Brown was sponsored by members of the Senate from the party of Lincoln back when Senators were actual political bosses. Additionally, abolitionists tried to start slave insurrections via the mail.

Abolitionists were a minor part of the Republican coalition and the South was under no threat that Lincoln, whose loathing of the black exceeded any 1880s Klan Grand Dragon, would try and stir up a race revolt against the South if they agreed to remain in the Union.

Certainly, there was not enough support among free soil whites to wage war on the South only for the purpose of freeing the slaves and giving them equal rights with white men. The preferred position of the North was that, at some point, the slaves would have to be released for economic reasons and the blacks would have to be colonized somewhere outside the US.

6. The south had legal precedent on her side. Each of the original states to adopt the Constitution had issued articles of secession from the old confederation (which was said to be permanent, a word consciously avoided in the Constitution).

Again, the South was not interested in Constitutional principles, they were interested in expanding slavery into free soil settlements. The "States Rights" defense is just a figleaf for a hostile and self destructive expansion of an obsolete economic system.

8. The North was the first to develop a purely sectional political party. The Republican party served northern interests exclusively. The South could only have responded by creating a Southern party and issuing in a new era of permanent limited civil war.

You have your cause and effect reversed; the GOP was created in response to slave state activism and expansionary ambitions.

Of course, the north having been able to create new states via settlement while denying the privilege to the south, the south would be fated to be a permanent loser.

Remaining in the union would not have been a loss because the North was willing to tolerate slavery in states where it already existed.

the North had no interest in forcing the South to wind down slavery before the South was ready

Right. Gerrit and Lysander threw money at Mr. Brown because they wanted to stop the expansion of slavery.

In Virginia.

Yeah. That's what happened.

Or the manufacturing North had every reason to keep the agrarian South in poverty (and hence dependent) and the RRs used the fervent abolitionists to fire up the rabble, as it were.

Again, the South was not interested in Constitutional principles

While it's clear that many southerners and, more importantly, architects of the CSA were interested in acquiring slave territory and defending slavery, it is also clear that they believed their position was explicitly and implicitly supported by the COTUS. This is evidenced by the reaction to Spooner's argument that slavery was, in fact, forbidden by the COTUS, one of the few arguments against slavery that was given any real weight by southern political theorists.

the North was willing to tolerate slavery in states where it already existed.

This conversation has done exactly what I wanted it to do. In fact it did a few things I didn't realize I wanted it to do. Some exceptions: things which are almost certainly impossible. I was aware I was likely to fail at impossible things going in, and took that into account during my cost/benefit analysis.

If it hasn't worked out for you...then perhaps you might want to listen, at least, to how I achieve my goals. I'm totally down for making this win-win. However, if that's impossible, I'm quite content with win-lose.

> Whinging doesn't do anything unless the adult chooses to make it do something.

Quite wrong. The adult cannot evolve to ignore whinging, because whinging is very often done for a good reason.

good reason - the offspring is very hungry, you forgot to feed him. or he is getting bitten by some bug or some shit

'bad' reason - the offspring wants the last morsel of food the family has, after the rest has been parceled out evenly

The adult pays an energy cost in trying to figure out what the plaint is about and how 'justified' it is.

As I've mentioned, whinging may also attract predators/hostiles.

Finally I think you've mentioned that in social species, the adult may lose face over whinging. I think you spoke of this from a normative perspective, but on a descriptive one, losing face has a fitness cost, whether it's humans or kangaroos.

> Easy. Nip. Painful, doesn't break the skin.

I don't know, maybe you're right. I cannot be sure. It could be that baby songbirds are thin-skinned, and developmentally rapid (=sensitive) in general. They hatch early, so they can grow fast, because they are in a very poor existential position (including in the egg state) until they can fly to escape predators. Because they are involved in this hectic 'race' for the safety of flight ability, small contusions may be more harmful than you might think. They are in flight literally ~20 days after the egg is laid.

Large birds tend to have a 'precocial' development. They are fairly safe in the egg and hatchling state because their parents are pretty big. The eggs are often incubated for 45 days vs 10 for many small birds, and the hatchlings soon leave the nest in the protective custody of the parents. They probably have more of a hide on them, but maybe still not much as they are dependent on the parents to fight their battles for them.

> If the adult decides not to let the subadult back on, how is the subadult going to get back? What's my threat model here? I can't imagine a plausible one.

By sneaking on?

What do you think these territories are, like one sq m?

A songbird owns maybe 1/2 an acre plus. There's no way he can surveil the joint with 97% effectiveness and just say "haha I'm bigger, so you're leaving" with an olympian calm. His surveillance effectiveness is more like 30%, therefore when he does encounter the subadult, he has to try to impose costs. He will give chase, maybe try to damage a feather or two in recalcitrant cases. In any case the chase (and alarm/scolding calls) exposes both birds to increased marginal risk of getting zipped that very moment by a hawk.

> They hatch early, so they can grow fast, because they are in a very poor existential position (including in the egg state) until they can fly to escape predators.

In truth, the situation does not even ameliorate that much later on. Most small animals tend to last about 9-24 months in nature, due to predation. Including such as squirrels, which are of course dozens of times more massive that the smallest songbirds. Basically if it fits in your hand it's an ephemeral wight.

Right. Gerrit and Lysander threw money at Mr. Brown because they wanted to stop the expansion of slavery.

In Virginia.

Yeah. That's what happened.

The abolitionists were a tiny minority, and many of them loathed Lincoln and the non-abolitionist Republicans because of GOP's willingness to let the South carry on with slavery for a few more decades.

Tom DeLorenzo, hardly a Lincoln partisan (and unlike DeLorenzo, I consider my conservatism to be Lincoln partisan derived), has frequently pointed out Lincoln's support for slavery:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo104.html

On July 19 the Associated Press and Reuter's reported an "amazing find" at a museum in Allentown, Pennsylvania: A copy of a letter dated March 16, 1861, and signed by Abraham Lincoln imploring the governor of Florida to rally political support for a constitutional amendment that would have legally enshrined slavery in the U.S. Constitution.

Actually, the letter is not at all "amazing" to anyone familiar with the real Lincoln. It was a copy of a letter that was sent to the governor of every state urging them all to support the amendment, which had already passed the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, that would have made southern slavery constitutionally "irrevocable," to use the word that Lincoln used in his first inaugural address. The amendment passed after the lower South had seceded, suggesting that it was passed with almost exclusively Northern votes. Lincoln and the entire North were perfectly willing to enshrine slavery forever in the Constitution. This is one reason why the great Massachusetts libertarian abolitionist Lysander Spooner, author of The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, hated and despised Lincoln and his entire gang.

While it's clear that many southerners and, more importantly, architects of the CSA were interested in acquiring slave territory and defending slavery, it is also clear that they believed their position was explicitly and implicitly supported by the COTUS.

If they wanted to leave peacefully, they should have negotiated with the North and given assurances they would not expand slavery because the remainder of the US West was already occupied by free soil whites. California's legislature, for one, had voted overwhelmingly to enter the Union as a free state. By leaving without even attempting to agree as to what exactly the final borders would between the CSA and the Union would be the Confederates made it clear to the North that their real motivation was to expand slavery into free soil territories.

Especially considering how the Union was prepared to constitutionally secure slavery in the South, the only reason for secession must have been aggressive expansionist intentions, and not constitutional principles.

But where exactly would they realistically have had the prospect of expanding to? Isn't that the weakness of your story? If Cali was already quite that rock-solid, then how propose to subjugate her? Were there appropriate lands that were less populous and/or less ardently freesoil, that might be 'turned to the dark side'? Mexico and straight down to the isthmus? Have we any evidence that 'everyone' in the know agreed that the whole point was to conquer Nevada + CO, or Mexico, or something?

I mean I guess KS and NE were soft, we know that. So they had potential.

But how would you (Dixie) ever come close to 'winning' the 1864 election -- or, more generally, wearing down Yankee resolve -- if you behaved like that? Or went to Mexico for that matter. You would have to be counting on something close to outright victory over the North.

Or fighting to a sort of draw, and getting major cessions in Mexico/ Cali/ Great Basin/ whatever? Is that really realistic?

Of course European powers do absolutely need to be factored into one's model.

But walkers act was growing stale. when he set out again to recruit support for a 4th try, the crowds were smaller. W wrote a book about his Nicaraguan experiences, appeal to "the hearts of southern youth" to "answer the call of honor". a few south youths ans the call. 97 filibusters traveled in sm groups to a rendezvous in Honduras where they hoped to find backing for a new invasino of Nico. instead the found hostility and defeat. W...surrendured to a brit captn.....expected as usu to be returned to the usa...instead the cap gave him to local authorities [who execute him]. His legacy lived on, not only in central am feelings about gringos but also in noram feelings about the sectional conflict that was tearing apart the us. when sen critter proposed to resolve the secesh crisis in 61 by reinstating 36-30 for all territories "now held, or hereafter acquired", Abe and his bros wigged out on the ground that it "WOULD AMOUNT TO A PERPETUAL COVENANT OF WAR against every people, tribe, and State owning of foot of land BTW HERE AND TIERRA DEL FUEGO". This was only a slight exagg. having begun the 50s with a drive to defend southern rights by econ diversification, many dixers ended it with a diff vision of southern enterprise -- the expansion of slavery into a tropical empire .....another VA boy, Geo Bickley, put this fantasy on an organised basis with his knoghts of the golden circle, founded in the mid 50s to promote a "golden circle" of slave states.....thru mex and central am to the rim of sou am, curving n again thru the w indies.

"The abolitionists were a tiny minority, and many of them loathed Lincoln and the non-abolitionist Republicans because of GOP's willingness to let the South carry on with slavery for a few more decades."

First, they wee a small minority until they proved useful to the powerful, then they became a large, vocal , and powerful minority. Bootleggers and baptists. Abolitionism certainly was not a fringe movement during the 1850s, it was a cool movement, like hippies in 1968.

Secondly, this statement contains a pretty big admission against interest. So the south should have just rolled over because they were only going to be stripped of their property, and culture over the next couple of decades? Do you think maybe they saw the writing on the wall? Do you think when a party that says the end of Southern civilization is part of an inevitable "irrepressible conflict", not once or twice, but as a central tenet of that party's existence, takes power over the South without even having a presence in the south, that the south might take this as a threat?

Anyway, abolitionism is the proximate cause of the war. Yankee apologists want to have it both ways. Somehow, the south is the aggressor and is only fighting to protect the right to own slaves (so that doesn't count or something).

The real cause of the war is that as the US evolved into one polity, once disparate elites merged in the north (the causation runs both ways here). The social distance between Philadelphia and Boston elites was shrinking, while the distance between the distance and Virginia elites was growing. It was an unstable situation, so the more powerful party (north) sold some BS about the south enslaving all the whites, whipped up a frenzy, backed the south into a corner and screamed when they got bit. C'est animal est tres merchant, quand on l'ataque se defend, or something (my French is pretty bad).

At least admit that what Lincoln said was true: '36-30 forever' creates some pretty damn strange incentives for 'attacking Tierra del Fuego' as he hyperbolically put it.

36-30 just seems like a strange thing for them even to be discussing. Think to yourself: why is something so odd even on the table, given the known capacities of yankeeland, known capacities of dixie? Is there more than meets the eye, here?

Yes, it's almost as if the rational response (after the end of all hope for safety via the principle of decentralized federalalism and the death of a lingering patriotism understandable to the land of Madison, Jefferson and Washington) was... secession.

I mean given that the yanks would find it gauche, i think, to ever attack canada, except if she became allied to a real enemy. which would not exactly seem real likely. also i believe the great majority of the people there live within 100 mi of the usa.

Guess i only know the 1812 one. it was always possible if canada should align with the crown against usa, which was conceivable as late as the interwar.

still wogs is wogs, you yourself say the Bos-NY-Wash collective consciousness was emerging in the 40s-60s, whereas it was The Other from rio bravo on down. open season! havent we all agreed, (sub)race is the sole reason George III didnt cromwell the nascent usa back to the stone age.

Lincoln is spot-on that this would produce a major /drang nach ost/ as my folk used to say.

still, we face the usual challenge. we read about the Knights of the Golden circle in some book. how did they get in that book? i dont doubt they existed, but are we hearing about em because some postdoc needed something to write about, or because their contemporaries really cared what they were doing.

I get what you mean about the wish to conserve the decentralist tradition. the ken burns movies mention how csa could be quite principled about that in their own affairs, even to the point to threatened to pose some collective disadvantage.

what is this death of a lingering patriotism though.

so you envision a sort of cultural 'globalization' up north. thoreau (and a variety of less radical figures) could talk to others about brown (and a variety of less radical figures) in a very common tongue. but the dixies couldnt? the dixies strike me as being on a pretty common wavelength too, tho there may have been a bit more class resentment? still, here you are talking about their culture and lifeways and stuff.

Decentralization was the big post-Jeffersonian theory about why things would be different this time when democracy always had led to tyranny in the past. The emergence of the Republican party (and really the party machine system in general, which, btw, did not operate in anything like the same manner in the South)should have proved to anyone who cared that this time was not different.

Southern culture may or may not have been a mono-culture, but power was decentralized. It was closer to the old Catholic social doctrine of subsidiarity. Land owners were still very much the lords of their domain. Whereas in the north, where the national party machine system flourished after the development of the convention system, you saw the emergence of something like the Cathedral; a politics, banking, information and religious network that imposed itself on all localities.

Of course, to the Republicans and their supporters, Republican tyranny is good thing. This is why after the Civil War you see the rise of nationalism, and even national socialism (Bellamyism), with power not only moving to the national elite, but to the extra-constitutional institutions that had been centralizing the north.

What I mean by death of a lingering patriotism is simply that. Southern aristocrats had been proud of fighting for the US flag. Patriotism can withstand quite a bit of tyranny. The writing was on the wall in the 30s, but Virginia did not secede until northern governors sent state militias to invade independent states. Admiral Semmes related the emotion of all this in his memoir.

Most animals handle it using scent trails. Humans do tracks instead. Perimeter scales with the square root of area.

Of course birds can't do either. Moreover, as per your data, birds reach full size very quickly. Further, midair conflict is necessarily much more difficult to control, because of the necessary minimum speeds, not to mention the hair's-breadth margin most birds have against gravity.

That said,

"His surveillance effectiveness is more like 30%, therefore when he does encounter the subadult, he has to try to impose costs. "

Where's this 30% come from? How do you know?

If your goal was to convince everyone that you are a pompous ass, then you have succeeded -- gloat away!

So you're trying to force me into feeling bad about myself, yes? And this is supposed to accomplish what exactly?

But where exactly would they realistically have had the prospect of expanding to?

Further West all the way to the Pacific. The CSA may well have had designs on the Caribbean and parts of Latin America, but those were long term agenda. A short term invasion of the Caribbean wasn't on the agenda because the Caribbean islands were controlled by Britain and Spain. A post-secession invasion of Cuba would have drawn the military ire of the European powers who favored the CSA in the actual war because of the CSA's pro-trade policies.

The CSA's immediate concern before the war, and what ultimately caused them to jump ship, was the North's refusal to expand the trade.

The only compromises the South found satisfying were ones that pushed the Missouri Compromise to the Pacific, which the North rightly rejected because California had already voted overwhelmingly to organize as a free soil state.

If the South wanted to bailout peacefully and on constitutional grounds, they should have postponed secession until they had given reassurances to the North that an independent South would not claim any Union territory out West.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Conference_of_1861

On February 6 a separate committee charged with drafting a proposal for the entire convention to consider was formed. The committee consisted of one representative from each state and was headed by James Guthrie. The entire convention met for three weeks, and its final product was a proposed seven point constitutional amendment that differed little from the Crittenden Compromise. The key issue, slavery in the territories, was addressed simply by extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific coast with no provision for newly acquired territory. This section barely passed by a 9-8 vote of the states. [8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crittenden_Compromise

The compromise proposed six constitutional amendments and four Congressional resolutions. Crittenden introduced the package on December 18.[1] It was tabled on December 31.

It guaranteed the permanent existence of slavery in the slave states and addressed Southern demands in regard to fugitive slaves and slavery in the District of Columbia. It proposed extending the Missouri Compromise line to the west, with: slavery prohibited north of the 36° 30′ parallel and guaranteed south of it. The compromise included a clause that it could not be repealed or amended.

The compromise was popular among Southern members of the Senate, but it was generally unacceptable to the Republicans, who opposed the expansion of slavery beyond the states where it already existed into the territories. The opposition of their party's leader, President-elect Abraham Lincoln, was crucial. Republicans said the compromise "would amount to a perpetual covenant of war against every people, tribe, and state owning a foot of land between here and Tierra del Fuego."[2] The only territories south of the line were parts of New Mexico Territory and Indian Territory. There was considerable agreement on both sides that slavery would never flourish in New Mexico.

Southern culture may or may not have been a mono-culture, but power was decentralized. It was closer to the old Catholic social doctrine of subsidiarity. Land owners were still very much the lords of their domain.

What threat to decentralization or Southern property rights did the North pose to the South's retaining slavery for the immediate future?

The North, most notably Lincoln, were ready to sign off on making Southern slavery constitutionally untouchable on the condition that slavery would not move out West, except, possible, to New Mexico, a territory the South did not want.

If the South seceded for constitutional principles, why were the only terms that would have made them stay in the Union proposals that expanded the Missouri Compromise?

I've long seen merit in the kind of thing Josh is saying. Wik says GOP was already strong by '56.

Doesn't a N-S partisan realignment pretty much lock in a war or some other denoument? It seems like if you have two power blocs at loggerheads they are gonna be whaling on each other, something's gotta give. In that context, if the South became more demanding about 36-30 or whatever, or acted semi-threatening about SoCal, it might be more understandable.

In other words, the partisan repolarization is going strong by 56, and we assume it's irreversible. The balance of power is thus fucked, and the idea that dixie wants to restore some balance is, to stake the minimal claim, not raving crazy.

On the other hand, what provoked the creation of the GOP, and was that justified?

The main cause was opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise by which slavery was kept out of Kansas

So you're trying to force me into feeling bad about myself, yes? And this is supposed to accomplish what exactly?

I am notifying you that what you think you achieved differs greatly from what others think you achieved. What you do with this information is up to you. Many people, when informed that their arguments did not have the intended effect, reconsider their arguments or how they are presented.

> Doesn't a N-S partisan realignment pretty much lock in a war or some other denoument? It seems like if you have two power blocs at loggerheads they are gonna be whaling on each other, something's gotta give.

I meant to specifically emphasize that one of the two blocs was far stronger. That's why it seems like an obviously unstable situation. So, however and whyever you got a strong GOP in '56, it seems like you are virtually already constrained to see fireworks, unless GOP suddenly somehow wanes.

How blame the South, then, for wanting to restore balance at that time? Now, maybe Dixie is much to blame for acts causing the GOP repolarization, maybe not -- I'm just saying, I see how she could be feeling very uncomfortable by '56 about the balance of power having been shredded and trod.

I didn't say he would necessarily agree (though the article is anti-fractional reserves) but would certainly be interested in an "official" media discussion of a revision (retrograde) of fiscal policy.

tsI meant to specifically emphasize that one of the two blocs was far stronger. That's why it seems like an obviously unstable situation. So, however and whyever you got a strong GOP in '56, it seems like you are virtually already constrained to see fireworks, unless GOP suddenly somehow wanes.

How blame the South, then, for wanting to restore balance at that time? Now, maybe Dixie is much to blame for acts causing the GOP repolarization, maybe not -- I'm just saying, I see how she could be feeling very uncomfortable by '56 about the balance of power having been shredded and trod.

If they were actually afraid of being politically dominated by a more prosperous and populous North, then why would the South have been tempted to stay if the Missouri Compromise were extended?

Had the Union given the green light to extend then the South would have still been policitaclly dominated by the North because the North was becoming wealthier than South thanks to industrialization (although the South was still wealthier at the start of the war). And the North's population was growing more rapidly than the South because Northern industry was attracting immigrants from Europe. How would extending an archaic type of economic activity further West have saved the South?

I also don't see why the South had anything to be afraid of in a Union with the North when slavery is taken out of the picture. There were Northern Democrats and Midwestern states the South could have compromised with on non-slave related issues to keep the South a major political player.

Had the North agreed to extend the MC line, it would have at least showed good faith. I doubt it would have saved the union. Jefferson saw the death of the union with the creation of the MC, and he was probably right.

If you read C.F. Adams, an interesting aside is how cultural exchange in the north and south ends well before the war. In the early 19th century it was apparently common for planter families to have their children educated at Harvard.

As it was, anti-southism in the form of abolitionism and other militant pietisms became more and more dominant as a vote-banking force in the north. You have the leading politicians of the day talking about an "irrepressible conflict" and sponsoring terrorism. And you say they had nothing to fear? Come on, man, the War was neo-Puritan jihad.

"I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:'As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,Since God is marching on.'"

Meanwhile, the masters of the North ended up regaining a national banking system and a powerful national gov. which they used to cartelize industry from sea to shining sea. I'm sure this was a coincidence and not at all a motivating factor behind the romantic American nationalism of the second half of the 19th century.

The possibilities open to the union from the beginning were:

1) abide the spirit of a limited constitutional union of soveregin states forever (okay, this was not actually a possibility.)

2) from a single ruling class by merger and marriage.

3) Separate along the fault lines of existing ruling classes.

4) One ruling class conquers the other.

5) Try to adjust the relations between ruling classes so that they stay relatively equal forever (again not really possible since this would require the greater power voluntarily and permanently relinquishing power to its rival. Extending the MC line might have implied a good faith effort at this on behalf of the north)

Your original comment was:

"It seems clear that the South provoked the North into war by making unreasonable demands to expand slavery outside of the South and that the Hamiltonian North, justifiably, brought the hammer down on the rebellious Jeffersonians and Jacksonians."

> Had the Union given the green light to extend then the South would have still been policitaclly dominated by the North because the North was becoming wealthier than South thanks to industrialization (although the South was still wealthier at the start of the war). And the North's population was growing more rapidly than the South because Northern industry was attracting immigrants from Europe. How would extending an archaic type of economic activity further West have saved the South?

The obvious point is parity or near-parity in the senate. Yet you may be more right than wrong. It's not like the senate is The One locus of power.

Still, we shouldn't be presentist. In that day the senate was no farce. And can't/couldn't a (large) minority use it to be merely obstructive - but powerfully obstructive - if you're not too interested in changing anything?

The Senate was actually kinda sorta the one locus of power. Party bosses made themselves Senators because they could control appointments to the other branches, which meant they could control patronage, which solidified their role as party bosses which meant they could control nominations for local, state, and congressional offices (all done by caucus) and determine which faction of a local part was officially recognized as "the local" the fundamental unit of a party. Being the local entitled the rank and file to patronage. The Senator thus had the ability to institute a kind of excommunication. The Senate was kind of like the Central Committee of the Communist Party, extra-constitutional, but the real locus of power.